


Carry On

by bluetoast



Category: Switched at Birth (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 15:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4268892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluetoast/pseuds/bluetoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelo walked out on his family in January of 1999. Three months later, he received the first phone call - Regina had lost custody of their daughter and Family Services asked if he could come and claim her. Rather than telling them he wasn't the girl's father - he went to Kansas City. This is how the two went on - until the phone rang another time, and once again, changed everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carry On

It was a phone call that Angelo Sorrentto didn't expect to ever get. Family Services had found him in Chicago and were telling him that his daughter, _not my daughter,_ Daphne had been taken into their custody and they wanted to know if he would be willing to come down to Kansas City and claim her. A million thoughts raced through his mind at those words. The urge to scream that _no, she is not mine,_ and _what the hell did Regina do?,_ were the forerunners. But suddenly overlapping his outrage at Regina's lie about the child was the image of Daphne, her face smeared in vegetable soup, a grin as wide as the Mississippi River.

Angelo knows he's not Daphne's father. Regina probably doesn't even know, but deep down, he knows that none of this is the little girl's fault. She's three and she called him daddy. She doesn't know these things and Angelo realizes that his grandmother would come up out of her grave and take him back with her if he continued to take his anger at Regina out on a helpless little girl.

So he tells Family Services that he will be on the next plane he can catch.

When the tiny little girl throws her arms around him without question and total devotion, tears of relief mixed with fear pouring down her face, Angelo knows he's done the right thing. It doesn't matter to him that she's deaf – they will find a way to manage, somehow. 

Family Services tells him that he's going to be granted full custody, as Regina Vazquez is currently unfit. If she wants to try for joint custody once she gets her life back together, they would contact him.

With a small suitcase in hand, Angelo takes Daphne back to Chicago.

Two months later, they move to Maryland. Several mountains of paperwork later, Angelo enrolls Daphne in the American School for the Deaf on scholarship, as, on his side, she is a first generation American. She goes to school all day and he works as a sous chef at an Italian restaurant in downtown Baltimore. 

A year and a half later, with still no word on Regina, Angelo formally adopts Daphne – and to celebrate, they go watch the Baltimore Orioles play the Kansas City Royals – afterwards, Angelo watches as his little girl and a host of others run around the bases. Even though he told her it wasn't a contest, Daphne charges up at the front of the pack with the twelve year olds, her blond hair streaming behind her. He catches her, the girl almost breathless as he stands with the other parents in the dugouts, waiting for their children. He hugs her to him and asks himself why he ever thought she wasn't his girl.

A few weeks after the trip to the ballpark, Angelo gets the promotion to head chef he'd been hoping for and Daphne starts to play baseball at school. She's good at it – although her competitive nature tends to get the better of her at times. She hates to lose – though she does have the grace to hold in her anger until she gets home. She then rebounds from her disappointment to do better the next time. 

Which is why she abandons baseball for track and cross-country when she enters her junior-high years.

Daphne brings home her first state championship trophy when she's a freshman. 

Letters come from Adriana Vazquez every few months. She tells them nothing of what Regina is up to, Angelo's not certain he cares. Daphne sends her grandmother letters, school pictures and copies of news articles with her name in them with regularity. She doesn't ask about Regina, Angelo wonders if she even remembers her mother sometimes. He thinks sometimes of how the little girl could have been lost into the system, how she could have ended up in a horrible place, had unspeakable things happen to her, and countless other worries that keep him up in the night.

They go to Italy for a vacation before Daphne's sophomore year – an early sweet-sixteen present.

It's two weeks into the school year when the phone rings on a Tuesday. 

A phone call from Missouri.

Angelo already knew that Daphne was not his little girl, and he long ago stopped caring.

What he didn't know was that Daphne wasn't Regina's little girl either.

Daphne was the daughter of a couple by the name of John and Katherine Kennish.

His little girl – had been raised as their little girl.

They had never suspected anything.

Angelo knows very well that the two girls can't just switch places back. After some discussion with Daphne and a lot of work, the Sorrentos move from Baltimore to Kansas City in December. It's a lot of adjustment on their part, and really, it'd be easier if the Kennishes would just shut up about it. They weren't the ones who had to move, Bay wasn't the one who had to switch schools, John wasn't the one who had to change jobs. Sure, it's a headache and Bay Kennish reminds him way to much of Regina, but it's not her fault. 

Just as it wasn't Daphne's fault that he packed up and left that cold January day and but for his own conscience, it could have ended two months later if he'd hung up the phone on Family Services and abandoned his daughter to an unknown fate.


End file.
